n e w s of t h e w e e k

Hoechst selling most of its polyesters business

After months of speculation. Hoechst has confirmed that its worldwide Trcvi-ra polyester unit is to be sold to a new company formed by a consortium of two privately held companies: Koch Indus­tries of Wichita. Kan., and Crupo Xtra. owned by the Isaac Saba family of Mexi­co City.

Affirming its focus on life sciences businesses. Hoechst has signed a letter of intent to sell the majority of its polyester fibers and resins assets to the as-vet-unnamed new company. A Koch spokes­man says all parties hope to conclude dis­cussions and settle on terms of the sale, including the price, in the next 60 days or so.

The consortium plans to buy 11 pro­duction sites, including Hoechst's U.S.. European, and Mexican polyester inter­ests, as well as the Hoechst share in poly­ester joint ventures in China and Tur­key. These assets have annual polymer capacity of 4.4 billion lb. sales of about 52.~ billion, and a workforce of about 11.000 people. The consortium will hold separate discussions regarding the pur­chase of a Canadian polyester business from Celanese Canada, in which Hoechst owns a 56".> stake. Hoechst will retain its South African and Brazilian polyester businesses.

"We see this as an excellent opportu­nity to extend our participation in the growing polyester value chain." says Cy Nobles, president of Koch Chemical. Adds Saba: "Our experience in the polyester business, combined with Koch's demon­strated operating expertise, will form a truly global enterprise."

Koch produces the polyester raw ma­terial /;-xylene. but this new venture marks Koch's entry into the polyester fi­ber and resin business. Ranked by sales, the company says it is the second largest privately held I'.S. company, with 199" sales in excess of S30 billion. (The first is agribusiness giant Cargill.) It employs more than 16.000 people worldwide in a variety of businesses, including oil and gas recover) and refining, petrochemi­cals, sulfur, asphalt, and real estate.

Saba's Groupo Xtra is a significant fac­tor in textile yarns and fabrics, agricul­ture, food processing, real estate, and tourism industries. The company does not reveal annual sales. With a holding of

32% of Gmpo Celanese, the Saba family is the largest Mexican shareholder in Hoechst's Mexico-based bottle resins, fi­bers, and chemical operations.

It is not clear whether William B. Har­ris. Trevira president and chief executive officer, will remain at the head of the new company. Harris says he is "delight­ed with the potential new owners be­cause they are committed to the polyes­ter business." He adds: "Our customers and employees should be very pleased that our business will have financially sound owners."

Hie new company will retain regional headquarters, established by Hoechst, in Charlotte. X.C.: in Toluca. Mexico: and in Frankfurt. Germany.

Patricia Layman and Marc Reiscb

Adding more value to natural gas Catalytica Advanced Technologies Inc.. Mountain View. Calif, has developed a catalyst that could convert natural gas. now underused in some countries, into more valuable materials, such as a petro­chemical feedstock.

Natural gas is abundant in many coun­tries but not used widely as a feedstock because transporting it is very expensive. As a by-product of oil production, gas is often pumped back into the ground or burned, contributing to global wanning. 'Hie resource would be worth more if the methane in it could be converted to a more transportable product, such as a liq­uid or an easily liquéfiable gas.

One current approach for converting methane to transportable products is based on synthesis gas. a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen formed

Researchers (from left) Douglas Taube, Periana, Gamble, and Henry Tau be developed an alternative process for activating methane.

when methane reacts with water. Further reactions convert synthesis gas to higher molecular weight products such as metha­nol. But making synthesis gas is energy in­tensive, typically occurring at 850 °C. And researchers have been searching for other, less energy-intensive conversion methods for decades.

In their search for alternative process­es. Catahtica researchers have focused on carbon-hydrogen bond activation to selec­tively oxidize alkane C-H bonds. In 1993, they reported a mcrcury(II) catalyst that converts methane to methyl bisulfate at 180 C with 43% yield (C&EN, Jan. 18, 1993. page 6). Now, they have an even better system based on platinum.

Developed by Catalytica director of research Roy A. Periana. research fellows Douglas J. Taube and Scott Gamble, sci­entific adviser and Stanford University professor Henry Taube, and visiting sci­entists Takashi Satoh and Hiroshi Fujii, the catalyst is a dichloroplatinum(II) complex with a bipyramidyl ligand. At 200 °C and in concentrated sulfuric acid, it converts methane to methyl bisulfate with up to ~2% yield [Science. 280, 560 (1998)]. Hy­drolysis of methyl bisulfate forms metha­nol, which can be distilled.

flic Catahtica researchers iiave made a remarkable advance" in methane acti­vation, says Jack H. Lunsford, a chemis­try professor at Texas A&M University, (College Station, with a continuing inter­

est in methane-to-meth-anol conversion. The yields "far exceed those of any other system of which I am aware," and the stability of the sys­

tem also is impressive," given that the solvent is concentrated sulfuric acid, he adds.

Robert C. Bergman, a chemistry professor at the University of Cal­ifornia, Berkeley, whose research interests in­clude alkane C-H bond activation, says the Cata­htica researchers have

8 APRIL Γ. 1998 C&KN

Science societies ask Congress for more funds for NSF

Last week, for the first time, leaders of organizations rep­resenting a quarter of a mil­lion scientists—Paul H. L Wal­ter (center), president of the American Chemical Society; Ralph G. Yount (lefl\ president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Bi­ology; and Andrew M. Sessler (right), president of the Amer­ican Physical Society—present­ed common testimony before the House Appropriations Committees Subcommittee on VA, HID & Independent Agencies. They united to urge Congress to increase the National Science Foundations budget by 10% to $3.8 billion for fiscal 1999. "The sciences have become almost totally interdependent," testified Walter. "Our progress in treating AIDS and our understanding of its pathology would never have occurred without critical advances in chemistry, biology, and physics, and, yes, mathematics, engineering, and computer science as well. NSF is the only fed­eral agency that has the program breadth needed to see that all the disciplines re­main vibrant and healthy."

Linda Raber

made "an important step forward" com­pared with their earlier mercury system. He notes that the platinum catalyst not only works better but also avoids use of mercury, which is very toxic, in the cata­lytic process.

In O H bond activation, none of the free radicals typically generated in high-temperature reactions are formed. In­stead, a metal takes only one C-H bond, breaks it, and then binds the resulting methyl fragment. Because the fragment is "never free to do what it wants," only one O H bond is oxidized, explains Peri-ana. Yields are low. however, if the prod­uct continues to react with the metal. That is not a problem in the Catalytica system because methyl bisulfate reacts much more slowly with the catalyst than does methane.

Given the catalyst system's perfor­mance, Periana believes the chemistry is more than just feasible for commercial de­velopment. "It's doable," he tells C&EN. Of course, other issues need to be ad­dressed, he stresses. "We're not interested in just operating this chemistry. We're in­terested in operating it competitively with significantly improved economics and en­vironmental advantages. "

Maureen Rouhi

Research universities: Undergrad reform urged A commission assembled by the Carne­gie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Menlo Park, Calif., is calling for a sweeping reform in the way the country's 125 research universities edu­cate their undergraduate students. Highly critical in tone, its newly released report says these universities should be seen as an "ecosystem" of intellectual inquiry that undergraduates should share in but most often don't. It makes 10 recommen­dations for change.

The commission thought its report would be controversial. It was right. Me­dia accounts elicited an outraged re­sponse from presidents of many of the country's top universities gathered in Washington, D.C., last week for the spring meeting of the Association of American Universities. AAU's president, Cornelius J. Pings, was especially upset and sent a letter to the Sew York Times protesting its coverage of the report.

The commission was originally estab­lished by foundation President Ernest L. Boyer, who died soon after the project

was launched. Replacing Boyer as chair was Shirley Strum Kenny, an English schol­ar and now president of the State Universi­ty of New York, Stony Brook. One of the commission's members is Bruce M. Al­berts, biochemist and president of the Na­tional Academy of Sciences.

The report says: "Students paying tu­ition get, in all too many cases, less than their money's worth. Universities are guilty of an advertising practice they would condemn in the commercial world. Recruitment materials proudly display7 the world-famous professors, the splendid fa­cilities, and the groundbreaking research that goes on within them. But thousands of students graduate without ever seeing the world-famous professors or tasting genuine research.

Graduate student instructors, it goes on, are badly trained or not trained at all. Many have not mastered English. "All too often," it continues, "students graduate without knowing how to think logically, write clearly, or speak coherently." Uni­versities, it claims, have done little more than apply "cosmetic surgery" to the problem.

Such criticisms are hardly new, and universities and federal agencies that support them have been addressing the problems. That is the main reason the re­port upset AAU members. An AAU spokesman says a recent AAU survey re­counted example after example of pro­grams that universities began in recent

years to remedy complaints by under­graduates and their parents.

Commission member Alberts was not in total agreement with the report's find­ings, either. He says it "does not adequate­ly reflect the many efforts being made by7

senior scientists to do new types of teach­ing at the early7 undergraduate level." But he said the report's most important mes­sage is that we should rethink the fresh­man year, aiming to make it completely different from high school."

Kenny tells C&EN that the report was not meant to be inflammatory but a "wake-up call." The commission did rec­ognize, she adds, that man}7 universities are dealing with the issues in the report. But for those who aren't, "we are offering a l()-point plan for remedying problems that aren't new," but are persistent.

The report lists and elaborates on the 10 steps: make research-based learning the standard, construct an inquiry-based fresh­man year, build on that freshman founda­tion, remove barriers to interdisciplinary7

education, link communication skills with course work, use information technology7

creatively7, culminate with a "capstone" ex­perience, educate graduate students as ap­prentice teachers, change faculty reward systems, and cultivate a sense of commu­nity within the universities.

The report can be downloaded from the Stony Brook web site at http://www. sunysb.edu.

Wil Lepkowski

APRIL 27. 1998 C&EN 9